Kristina
by gkmoberg1
Summary: Inspired by a brief scene in 'Let the Right One In'. Dialogue taken from the book will be italicized. [Parts BetaRead by SuzSinger - thank you!]
1. Chapter 1

**_Kristina_**  
.o oOo oOo 1 oOo oOo o.

I had found long ago that down at the waterfront in Malmö life stirred for at least a short while after dark. And so I became a regular.

On a cool wet night in May, I made yet another of my visits. Oil lamps and candles flickered in doorways, while the occasional gas lamp gave a steadier glow. Figures, the men of the sea, moved their way along the wharf, bent over in their woolen coats and upturned collars. They were dark shapes, hard to discern against the shifting darkness cast from the shadows of the flickering lights. About us, a cold rain fell. It kept the figures moving, either back towards their ships or else into the places that were open to them.

Out on the water, the sway of scattered lights hinted the location of ships at anchor. But as I made my way onto Norra Vällgaten, most of the harbor view became lost behind the bulk of the vessels that were tied up close. Putting the Uppsala bastion to my back, I looked up into the night, letting my focus travel the height of the foremast of the first ship along my route. The wetness of the rain felt good on my face and I rubbed the water into my cheeks and massaged it into the skin of my throat.

I wrapped myself into the sounds and smell of the port. Staying along the edge of the front street's buildings and keeping the water to my right, I made my way along. The harbor itself, the men, the ships - all had their own stench. The mix was harsh and the breeze quickly brought and cleared them way over and over. But mostly it was the smell of the wet street, the wet dirt and the wet canvas that assaulted me.

The next ship was smaller, older, but with more lamps burning within than the first. I could hear the men. Their voices, a form of Dutch, just as with the light of their hanging oil lamps, spilled out through the ship's open portals. Within, they were discussing something to do with storage and how many crates more could be added. For me the details were too difficult to follow.

I continued past the first and then the second open establishment and stopped outside the third. The men inside were grouped into knots. I knew they'd be organized by their assignment. Sailors from any ship tend to stay together when they come ashore. This would be a foreign port with a strange language. Yet it would be a change from ordinary ship life and so for them it would be an adventure to come ashore and to go into the places and spend the evening – for a short while – on land and away from the continuous swell of the water. And so I knew they could come.

I stood and waited, keeping to myself and holding close against the side of the establishment. The groups would filter out in a short while. The docks by day bustled but at night things closed up early. My need was to find a straggler, one who came out alone. By experience I knew it would either happen soon or not at all. Once the groups started to retreat back to the water my chance would be over. Then it'd be over for the night. And I would likewise slip away into the darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Kristina  
**_.o oOo oOo 2 oOo oOo o.

The patter of the rain continued for a long time. Ships moved against their berths. Canvas creaked. Men sang. The water slapped against the piers and the hulls. Through it all I remained quiet. Over and over, the breeze delivered and then stole away the harbor stench and the stench of the men and the stench of the dirt.

Gradually a new smell came at me from the harbor: the smoke of burnt coal. I had seen the new freighters sporting this ability. Amidships, between the masts, the newer ships would have a single vertical metal chimney. A furnace had been supplied below in the ship's bowels and it could be loaded with coal. The result was a ship that could move without the wind – remarkable. However the soot and smoke put me off on wanting to know more.

Changes such as this, little changes, were always coming along. Gas lighting, canals, and now furnaces on ships. It was ever the slow trickle of change. As much as I regretted this slow evolution, somewhere within me there was a tickle that I had to stay current. I did not understand the need for such travel or the need for coal burning ships yet they were here. In order to survive I had to accept them and keep on the watch for whatever step came next. Could I continue without doing so? I wasn't sure; however, it seemed to be an unwise strategy.

A shout rang from the establishment. I heard a shove and a scuffle. Then another shout. With it came my chance. A lone man stepped out and into the rain. A sailor. Young. Sober. And –my favorite- angry. His posture told me what I needed to know. His solid body was fully involved. Face tight. Arms at the ready. Wide, balanced stance. He made several firm steps out through the door and whirled around with ferocity back at the establishment. As he had yet to put on the coat he held stiffly in his left hand I had a good view of him.

Nobody followed. After a minute he whisked the rain from his face and bristling mustache. He used his clenched right hand in a strong sweep that literally threw the water from his skin. He continued to glare back into the establishment.

"Lars?" I asked. Startled, he realized my presence. Then rounding fully to face me, he pulled back his strong right arm – only to let it down when he saw me better in the light.

"You are mistaken Miss," he replied in English, thick with an Irish accent.

"My mistake," I replied, likewise in English.

"Your man must still be inside."

"I'm no longer convinced of that."

"Then…"

I looked him over, making it clear I was doing so.

"Then Lars will have to wait until tomorrow," I decreed.

"His loss."

I led him away.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Kristina  
**_.o oOo oOo 3 oOo oOo o.

Fire is my greatest concern. For years I took the same risk day after day of seeking shelter under roofs or in cellars. But I found that I was entrusting my security to structures created from wood. Accidental discovery, my then primary motivation, had driven me for years to make decisions on where to shelter myself. And too often I found upon review that I had been subjecting myself to poor decisions.

Men don't go with regularity into darkened spaces, poking about. Their diurnal and nocturnal habits turn out to be hugely regular, and it takes an exception for them to alter their ways. And while fire is also the exception, it takes a different form. Men typically proceed with measure and plan. Fire does not. Men have fears, limits of energy and the time they apply towards an objective. Fire does not. Men willfully retreat when their limits are reached or daylight is exhausted. Fire does not.

It was a recent experience in Lund that had provoked me to reassess my ways. I awoke one autumn evening and found the barns and carriage houses above me in flames. The amount of fuel on hand – hay, straw, the structures themselves – made for an utter disaster once ignited. I had to squirm my way out from the basement I had been using. The floorboards were caving in as I exited; it had been that close. Everything I had accumulated to that point in time was lost. I don't want to remember the size of my loss but the event brought me to think through what was the more serious concern.

In my reassessed life, stone construction became my new target. Cathedrals, town halls and similar solid constructions became my new haunt. I swore myself an oath to avoid wood. Months of uneasiness followed wherein I had to train myself to align with my decision, so great was my fear of discovery. Yet the forced new habit became the norm. Stone become my bulwark.

Somehow on this cool wet May night it was the coal soot coating on that sailor's skin that brought all this to mind. We had made our way off of the docks and around to an alleyway. There, the evening had taken a new turn for him. And while we were locked in a new passion –one of my design – the smell of the coal soot and the taste of it from his skin distracted me. As things progressed through the sequence I had come to take as routine my mind was crossing off steam-driven ships as a means of travel or as a means of securing myself. Anything that might lead to uncontrolled fire had to be avoided. All that wood, canvas, rope and crates, surrounding a furnace and its coal stores and internal insatiable fire, formed nothing short of a conflagration in the making. Sometimes that relentless evolution I saw about me led to questionable ends.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Kristina  
**_.o oOo oOo 4 oOo oOo o.

The little thing shuffled sideways. I caught the movement at the periphery of my vision. Slight. When I turned and could get a better view I could see the figure was short and indeed a child. Its thin arms were spread out from its body, crooked at the elbows. It was ready to dart yet I could see a confidence to its composure that told me it was not afraid.

I wondered how well the child might be able to make me out. It was utterly dark along the side of the building. The sailor and I were standing well into the alleyway – the sailor's back pressed firmly to the wall, my face buried tight into him. It had been a while since the he had last moved or made any sound. I had been fully engrossed in the moment and so was slow to realize that the light taps I had started to hear were actually those made by two small feet treading the stones and dirt nearby.

In this, the depth of night's darkness, the little thing should only at best be able to hear me. But when I moved an arm silently away from the sailor -who had given me so much- and shifted myself so as to be able to get at the child if I needed to, it danced back lightly. This should not have been possible unless it could somehow see as clearly as I could.

And then I understood. I understood.

A jolt ran through me upon the realization. How long had it been? While I am always wanting this to happen, when it did it was usually sudden. Often brief. And sometimes deadly.

The sailor was no longer a concern. Yet I was still wrapped up with him. What I needed to do was ascertain –quickly- what might occur next. The child was remaining alert and very much on edge. A wrong move and it would flee.

"Is it just you?" I asked, breaking the silence. Several moments followed and then came a nod of the small head. "I am here alone as well," I offered. The child remained quiet. I needed to extend my web; draw the child in. I added a plea: "Stay."

There was no reply. I remained careful not to make any motion away from the sailor. The child backed away another small step but remained silent. I needed a plan. Despite years of being alone and pondering how things would proceed when I next met another, I had not anticipated an encounter such as this. A child. A mere child. I'd not seen this for a long time. I thought back. It would have to be at least fifty years. Seventy, perhaps. Yes, all the way back to before my start. Before.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Kristina  
**_.o oOo oOo 5 oOo oOo o.

Father had made the arrangements when I was at maturity. Our family was with a pittance of means and he had through some negotiations arranged for what he hoped would be a better situation for us all. I would go to stay with a man who was a close associate of his oldest brother. It was not decreed to be as a marriage, yet on this the door was not closed either.

The mud season was at its end when my family had bundled me up with a few possessions. An uncle had then taken me with this wagon to the crossroads at Åby where I had been handed off to another man, a proper gentleman and lady escort. Before it had fully settled on me about where I was and where my life was going, everything around me had changed. I never saw my family again. Nor did I ever hear from them. My brothers and sister, my father and mother, the aunts and two uncles, the herd of cousins – they all simply dropped from my life in the turn of a week and I was under a new roof.

My new master was a recluse. I saw him seldom and after some confusion –for I felt I had proved a disappointment- found that I preferred it that way. Strongly preferred it thus.

He was wicked. And preposterous. His men feared him. Yet he must have had something over them because they stayed. By day he was in town and I was allowed free range of the main house, kitchen and garden. At night he could be heard but I almost never saw him. In this new life my duties were appropriate for my station - a young lady of the house. Yet it was not my place to go off the grounds or to go to town, and so I never did. Rather, I tended to a few assigned tasks and was instructed by a much older woman on letters and how to conduct myself. I did not understand where for me this was headed, but it was the path offered.

The house I had come to live in was made of stone and had windows that contained glass that sat within wooden frames which in turn held the assembly into the stone. Yet more, the creation where I now lived had a multitude of small fireplaces, a second floor and steps within. There were servants of all types and a man who, while also being a servant, ran the house from top to bottom. Above, there were chambers, one of which was assigned to me. I had a room for myself, a small fireplace, a toilet and a sitting area, although I did not know what to do with any of this space. (There was even a secret: a concealed door which opened into a stairwell that led down steeply into a sort of basement room and exit below and to the rear of the house.) Another chamber held the old woman who in the evenings gave me instruction. She was never to be bothered during the day. And in a third, the one opposite mine across this second floor, was the chamber of the Master. This, I never approached and it was most often shut.

Outside the house lay a walled and gated courtyard. Here, merchants from Norrköping would come and bring news and wares. I was soon assisting in the evaluating of the produce men would bring, although for as much as I could I got away from and ignored the commotion.

Beyond this courtyard there was a second structure- a tower keep. The tower and its stables and armory sat opposite the house and within it were stationed the Master's men. In time, I learned there were rooms below it, a hall on the ground level, and rooms up within it. But all this was off limits to me and truly of no interest. My attention was drawn elsewhere.

I was misled.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Kristina**_  
.o oOo oOo 6 oOo oOo o.

"I've been here for months. Are you new?" - I asked the question to the child before realizing it might not be the best strategy to keep probing. I needed to switch my attempt at starting a conversation to something regarding myself or something neutral. What I quietly wanted to do was shift my balance and get turned about. To get down to the child's level would help. Yet the skittish thing was too able to see me. I needed to build a layer of calm between us first.

The sailor moaned, his weight falling against me. I shifted with the movement, keeping an eye on the child. It stepped further away but I took the moment, the sailor's collapsing form, as a means to similarly bring myself down from full standing height. I eased the dying body downward, awkwardly trying to keep it against the wall but having to shoulder it hard so as to keep it there. Gradually we sank to the base of the wall.

I exhaled heavily as I tried to steady myself and deal with the whiskey the sailor had been drinking. It was warming me. I was succumbing to its sublime feeling but the heaviness was not helping. I tried a slow blink at my own hands. I was learning Irish sailors can hold more drink than I had anticipated. Throughout, the child stood back, wary and watching.

"_Are there many of us?"_ it asked. So innocent. If I had a heart that could melt, it would have. Here was a child in the same form of life as me – and apparently without a guide. Based on the outline, the voice, the posture and the movements, I could tell it was a boy. I wanted to draw my fingers though his hair and comfort him. I wanted to soothe him and tell him know he could be safe. With me he would be secure. And as well I wanted more: to wrestle him to the ground and claim him as mine.

But he was still wary and out of reach.

My mind was screaming, "Could this be one of them?"


	7. Chapter 7

_**Kristina**_  
.o oOo oOo 7 oOo oOo o.

Young boys. In my prior life, I had become aware of them as the months unrolled under the direction of my new Master and the old woman who instructed me. There were more than a few. Yet they were like the mice: once spotted, they scattered. They'd appear along the edges of opened windows or squirting along the boundaries of the courtyard below. I never met them but was aware of them. Never by day and always at night.

I was best aware of them by their reek; it was if they had been allowed to wrestle in the most unmentionable wastes. That smell, drifting in an opened window would alert me that I was being watched. Yet even a slight turn of my head to get a glimpse would send their smudged faces and all too thin arms back into the night air.

When I asked about them I was redirected to something else. In my then simple ways and nature, simple distractions worked.  
Mostly I was paraded about. I never thought about myself in this way during that time, but now I do. The merchants who stopped by the manor saw me regularly. The farmers who were bound to my Master saw me. And the few men that the Master kept at the tower; they too saw me. My role, unbeknownst to me, was to be seen; this I have come to believe. The Master had no other interest in me. I was a plaything that was shown off, almost like a distraction. He was never with me, but he would arrange that I would be in attendance at the right time on good afternoon. I was to be seen strolling or made to be present to make a greeting. Ohhh…

Also I heard things. And I heard _of_ things. I asked and as before, I was redirected. I should have considered and reflected, but all was so new to me and the life that I had being shepherded into was like a spell building upon my foolish self-interests. Whereas my life in the country with the family I had lost was ordinary and regular, this new life defined a new ordinary and regular. At the same time that I was climbing into it, I was wrapped with the struggle and pleasure. So the warning signs came and went while I was delighted by fabrics, letters, glass windows, feasts, trappings and candles. And it was my doom.

Several years into my new life, on a different autumn day, my life changed anew for a second time. I heard shouting from the courtyard, men in hurry and then the dashing of horses. An unsettled air crept into my chambers during the quiet the followed. I stirred myself from a small piano that I had been introduced to and went to the window. Below, the courtyard stood empty. Worse, it gave the impression of deserted. As the remaining afternoon faded, the men did not return. Instead, men from Norrköping arrived. They streamed in, carried by four or five horse-drawn wagons. They filled the area and soon the house

By this time I realized I was alone. The men were gone; the servants were gone; the old woman and the Master – neither answered their door – were gone. So I hid behind the headboard in my bed chamber. As I listened, the men burst from room to room yelling oaths of vengeance, although from what I did not know. Things were taken away; things were broken; things were smashed. By chance they did not find me. I trembled as I overheard their plans. I had to get out.

When I had a chance I took it and used the secret panel that had been once shown to me. I secured the latch behind me and in my fine clothing and slippers I made my way down. The way was dark and steep. Down, I made my way into the basement room that I had been told would be there. Step by step I descended. As I went, a stench overcame me, a horrific reek that almost drove me to cease my efforts and climb up and out. But eventually a step of mine landed on dirt and I was at the bottom. But thereafter I was lost. Another step and my left foot sloshed into something awful. The foulness slapped up over my ankles and then subsided down into my slipper, settling around my foot and toes. There was no light and I had no way to find the way out. I worried what would happen if the men were to find me. I stood there like a trapped mouse: one foot in a muck that I didn't want to learn too much more about, my two hands over my mouth and nose, my fears rising while I tried not to breathe in the rancid air.

But then, then, I swear that although my eyes were blind in the dark, the very walls about me started to move and I found I was far from alone.


	8. Chapter 8

_**Kristina**_  
.o oOo oOo 8 oOo oOo o.

The men, the men who had invaded the house while swearing for vengeance, pried open the escape door I had been seeking. They had heard my screams and had come as quickly as they could to my rescue.

Yet what they came into was wretched. A stream of young boys, those awful dirty creatures, streamed up and out as the men came downwards tentatively. The late afternoon sun guided them. I could hear the boys screaming in pain as they made their way outwards, through the house gardens. It was as if somebody were scalding them in boiling water. Meanwhile the men, not comprehending what had occurred, found me shredded and lying prone in the mud of that cellar.

I barely remember the moment for I was in such pain. Dozens of little hands had come through the darkness at me. Without pause or warning they had become dozens of little grasping hands. And then those same dozens of hands had just as suddenly torn into my beautiful clothes. I had cried out in distress for what they were doing to my fine things. Still, I did not know what was to come next. To those men, my rescuers, I must have looked to have been ravaged by a horde of dogs. Yet there were no dogs to be found, only me in my mauled dress, steeped in my own blood and the muck of the cellar floor.

I passed out before the men could lift me up.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Kristina**_  
.o oOo oOo 9 oOo oOo o.

_"Are there many of us?"_ the little boy had asked.

I righted myself onto all fours and laughed. I think it sounded more like a cackle as the effects of the whiskey continued to surge through me. The boy was closer now than before; I was looking at his little knees. What I needed was for him to come a couple paces closer.

_"No,"_ I replied. _"We are so few, so terribly few."_

True words. The decades were advancing, and it was becoming harder to find any of ourselves. It was a thinning of what was already a scarce presence. (I confess I had something to do with that, more than I'm going to tell you about.)

Yet I found it regrettable that we were so few. We could be so much more. However what I had found the most lacking was the paucity of us who could be held up as being more than recluses hiding in the dark. I found the lot detestable. Most were smitten with themselves. Arrogant. Vile. Oh, I was vile as well, but I had learned to live in my new self. I had soaked it in. There had been the agony of releasing who I had been and releasing who I had thought I was going to be. Many fail at this point. To surrender the morals of what we each had once been and to find our way into a skin that we can continue on with – it was too stark.

_"Why?"_

_"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why."_

There is a sick humor to it. How many times had I caused it, just to see it play out on yet another pretty face? Turn somebody and watch their life fall into ruin.

_"You must understand that,"_ I pressed on. _"Such a heavy burden, oh my."_ I fluttered my hands before my face while behind the distraction I worked at getting my feet set beneath me and my weight overtop of them. _"Oooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscious,"_ I said in the voice of a mother on whom I had played out this little game some years ago.

_"Can we die?"_

_"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or…"_ Finally the child was within reach! I lifted out a finger to assess the distance. Sooner than I thought, my finger connected and poked hard into the child's shift, stabbing him just off from center. _"There. That's where it is, isn't it?"_ And I could tell by his reaction that he had the same impression as me: there was something within us, wrapped up in us, right at his spot, curled deep within.

The child stood, hesitating at the moment of my having a finger pressed into the ribs beside his sternum. My chance was at hand. _"But now my friend. I have a wonderful idea..."_


	10. Chapter 10

**Kristina**  
.o oOo oOo 10 oOo oOo o.

My body, queer with my acquired intoxication, lurched forward. But the effort was absent of the dexterity required. The boy bounded back, easily evading me. And with that the game was up. In my state I could not pursue. The waif was free to go.

For so very long I had wanted to find those dirty little creatures who had led to my demise. To break their necks, one at a time, would be a satisfying. Had this been my first chance? I longed to know but the moment was fleeing.

When I had been brought back to consciousness following the attack on me in the muck of that horrid, fetid cellar, I had found myself under the care of the nearby farm women. The woman of the house where I had been taken, plus several others, had bathed me and had tried to address my injuries. The wounds, though, were grievous and did not let me rest. Within two days I was at an end. Ashen white, I could not lift myself up or speak. The undeserved and unforgivable traumas delivered by that swarm of filthy teeth and fingernails remained raw and infected.

The men returned several times, demanding that I be burned. The women decried this saying I was not a foul thing but rather a wreck who deserved comfort and to be allowed to die in piece. Even so, at one point I was dragged outside and left to lie in the dirt before the farmhouse. I had no strength to resist and so lay there in hot sun, finding I had to keep my eyes shut lest the brightness carve out my eyes. Men and woman argued over me. I lay in a heap before them, my strength utterly gone, my insides churning in a manner I had never before felt. Somehow it was allowed that I should be returned inside and was roughly carried there and left.

A fever overcame me within an hour. I wavered at the verge of passing out. The visions I was having were unworldly and my only consolence in those moments was to bite my own tongue. The immediate pain and sweet sensation of the damage I was doing to myself kept me breathing. Yet this too failed me.

A veil was drawn over my face. Finally, for it was with relief, the world fell away.


	11. Chapter 11

**-Kristina-**  
**.o oOo oOo 11 oOo oOo o.**

My body had been carried outside and placed in a common field cart. I am not sure what the plans had been but a cloudburst postponed their next steps. It was there, on the straw the farmer's cart, where I awoke and I started my new life. Soaking wet, I crawled and fell to the ground and from there made my way through the mud and away.

In the days that followed, the horror of my new self took hold. I discarded all I had once been and shook on my new shell. My looks were ruined. The scars from those filthy creatures were never to go away. Despite my age I appeared as a woman far older. Aches wracked me, even in my new form. These have never left me.

A vengeance I swore but the chances never came. My former 'Master' was gone. His horde of young boys scattered, best I could tell. Regarding the old woman who had been my instructor for those years, I still do not know.

The rain continued to fall. The boy stood for a moment at the end of the alleyway. I could see him assessing me one last time. I needed to get up and follow, but my body was still failing me. The wiskey was my undoing. All I could was watch. He stepped away and disappeared onto Norra Vällgaten. I swore I'd find him, get him, begin to collect on the wrong done to me.

.o oOo oOo ### oOo oOo o.


End file.
